Public Displays of Devotion

Here's a story about an Orthodox Jew who was removed from a flight to New York City because he was praying on board.

I flew just a couple of weeks ago on Air Canada's Jazz, the airline in this story, but I've thought about this very thing happening to me on any commercial airline that I fly. I pull out a prayer book on board--sometimes before take off, sometimes during the flight--and pray some of the canonical hours. Will someone observing me making the sign of the Cross get nervous and mistake me for what they presume is a typical "religious fundamentalist terrorist"? I often will pull out a Bible and read from it as well.

Will there have to be new rules in play about pubic displays of devotion? Does anyone reading this feel funny these days reading a Bible in a public place or praying and making the sign of the Cross when others can see you doing so?

Comments

[Stuart Koehl]

Gee, I wonder what would happen if I hung a bunch of icons on the seatback in front of me, set up a crucifix, a couple of candles, and a censer, then started chanting the Troparion of the day in Church Slavonic? I mean, aside from the "no smoking" thing they have?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Does anyone reading this feel funny these days reading a Bible in a public place or praying and making the sign of the Cross when others can see you doing so?<<<

i don't usually given it much thought. When I am traveling, I have my Byzantine Daily Worship with me, and if I've got some quiet moments, I'll go through the daily prayers. I also have chotki, the black prayer rope that the Orthodox like to use in conjunction with the Jesus Prayer, which has gotten me through some pretty trying business meetings.

As to making the sign of the Cross, it has become reflex action--can't help it, certain words just get the arm going. At assemblies at my daughter's Episcopal day school, I notice that about half of all the parents and kids there make it. I assume a few are just high church Episcopalians, but most are Roman Catholics. It being an Episcopal school, no one so far has been so rude as to ask why I am crossing myself "backwards".

[Bill Cork]

I've heard similar stories of harassment from Arab Christians who have been branded "suspicious" for praying the rosary or for having an Arabic Bible on them. One friend of mine, a priest with the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, was asked about his Bible; the security person snidely asked if it was a Koran. He didn't believe my friend when he told him it was a Bible. In frustration he nearly shouted at the security person: "Look at my collar. I am a Catholic priest!"

[Firinnteine]

I generally do pray when onboard an airplane; I find it's an especially good time for it, with few distractions and relative quiet. But I admit I'm generally sensitive about using the sign of the cross in public, having been raised Methodist and spending much of my time around Evangelical types. I find it profitable, and use it in Church and private settings of course, but as the action is not (so far as I know) commanded, I'd rather not use it than be a cause of stumbling to someone. Also, since I'm often the only person a lot of these people know who will offer them a more traditionalist or high-church viewpoint, I find it generally wise to choose my battles carefully. I've been known to defend the sign of the cross, but the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is a tad more important....

Last year I read my Bible on an airplane; at another point in the flight, my seat-mate was reading his Book of Mormon. (We had an interesting conversation.) I guess neither of us had better fly Jazz Canada. :-)

[Deacon John M. Bresnahan]

Interesting issue. At home we always pause to say grace at meals. On the road we never have, feeling, somehow it would be out of place. Yet when we went South for the first time a few years ago we were struck by how often we saw families pause, bow their heads, and apparently very quietly say grace. We realized then how much we as Northern Catholics had been affected by the secular Zeitgeist that makes us internally control how much religious expression--if any--we will allow ourselves in public.
Another example--when we were kids playing sandlot ball we all either made the sign of the cross before going to bat or made a sign of the cross in the dirt with the end of our bats.
Nowadays you only see Hispanics doing that. Were the rest of us Catholics intimidated into stopping the practice by secular society?? Or by the liberal disease that has infected Catholicism and which derides most Catholic sacramentals and customs of the past (while bringing in new undemanded fads like liturgical dance).

[Gene Godbold]

Stuart notes:
"I also have chotki, the black prayer rope that the Orthodox like to use in conjunction with the Jesus Prayer, which has gotten me through some pretty trying business meetings."

Can you actually strangle people with that thing? That's kinda cool. I've been tempted to wring the neck of some of my bosses (as well as some clients), but I've so far been successful at restraining myself.
:-)

[Ken Myers]

I think the really interesting question is why prayer in this place would be regarded as an annoyance to people. Is it a function of the modern Western assumption that religion is a purely private matter, and that visible acts of devotion in public (especially in an enclosed public place) thereby violate the social covenant of seculaism in some way? Or are the airline officials worried that in-flight prayer might offer an unwanted reminder that pilots and mechanics are not sovereign over all events?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Can you actually strangle people with that thing? <<<

Wanted to, sometimes. But I use it only for good.

As a pilot and an aeronautical consultant, I can safely say that planes fly only because everyone on board believes that they can.

[firinnteine]

My family always prayed before meals, including in restaurants. But then, I was raised in the Midwest. :)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>My family always prayed before meals, including in restaurants. But then, I was raised in the Midwest. :)<<<

At a Lenten dinner last year, the Mother Superior of the Basilian nuns came to visit. She sat with our assistant pastor, a bi-ritual monsignor and former Navy captain. They got their food, sat down at the table, and he was about to dig in, when he saw Sister glaring at him. Sheepishly, he put down his fork, stood up, and blessed the food. Then she smiled at him and sat down to eat.

[Bill R]

"...a bi-ritual monsignor..."

Hmmm...Stuart, that's not some sort of obscure moral issue the good monsignor has, is it?

[Bob]

Making the sign of the cross in public is something I am pretty much used to now. As for flying my policy is to avoid it as much as possible, but the last time I flew I did say the rosary, and I did wonder if they thought I was some sort of a zealot. I didn't do anything as daring as reading the bible, instead I settled for the encyclicals of JP II.

[Scott Walker]

Whenever we fly, or even embark on a road trip, we pull out the trusty little red Orthodox prayer book produced by the Antiochian archdiocese and pray the prayer for travellers. The sign of the Cross is included. We don't make a spectacle of ourselves, but if somebody sees us and doesn't like it, I'm afraid that's just too bad.

[Tom Austin]

We always have one of the children pray when setting out on long road trips. I was chagrined to hear my younger daughter (age 3) incorporating my personal addendum to the traveling prayer (they always hear much more than we think they do): "And Lord, smite the un-roadworthy out of our way." No more imprecatory psalms for the road trip....

[DGP]

>>>I think the really interesting question is why prayer in this place would be regarded as an annoyance to people.<<<

It's one of those ironic P.C. bigotries: "Despite the rise of Islamist terror, we must remember that Islam does not teach terror; on the other hand, the rise of Islamist terror teaches us to be wary of anyone with deeply held religious beliefs."

Of course, most of the people promoting the bigotry didn't need 9/11 to feel that way, but 9/11 gives them a handy rationalization.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>> "Despite the rise of Islamist terror, we must remember that Islam does not teach terror. . . "<<<

One of those things, which if you say it often enough, you might convince yourself is true. However, 1400 years of historical experience with Islam teaches us differently.

[James A. Altena]

Personally, I always say grace in restaurants, even when with non-Christians, though quietly; and if a guest in a non-Christian home I take temporary leave to do so there as well, likewise unobtrusively. It is important not to compromise the practice of our faith, and our witness to others of its centrality to our lives, but to do so in a way that, while others are aware of it, is not obstreperous or disruptive.

As an undergraduate student, four of my five assigned dormitory roommates were respectively from Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Egypt. (I was at Wayne State U. in Detroit, where the suburb of Dearborn at that time was the largest locus of Middle Eastern immigrant settlement in the USA). One was a devout Muslim who faithfully took out his prayer rug five times a day and recited his prayers and performed his prostrations (15 or so minutes on each occasion). It didn't bother me at all (although I also was in the agnostic-atheist phase of my life at that time).

(A digression -- the roommate from Iran was a different matter, as the hostages were taken in Tehran during that quarter, and he was a crackpot who would lecture me that the USA was really a sham democracy run in secret by the CIA, and that the USA would do whatever Iran told it to do -- which was most embarrassing to another Iranian in the next dorm room who was a sane, intelligent, and personable fellow. We wound up being separated in mid-term after a fight.)

While not in any way defending the treatment of the Jewish passenger (which presumably is another instance of PC-ism run amok), I wonder if:

a) His actions (e.g. the rocking motions; and was he praying volubly out loud instead of quietly to himself?) were performed to a degree that was publicly disruptive (the airline claims that several passengers complained), and

b) If so, did any crew members first try to speak to the passenger about it to request a more subdued degree of expression, and if so did the passenger refuse to cooperate?

Answers to those details might change the complexion of the story considerably. E.g., I doubt that, were we passengers on a plane, we would take kindly to it if a devout Muslim insisted on rolling out his prayer rug in the center aisle and loudly reciting his prayers while performing his prostrations.

[Scott Sealy]

According to the article:
---
"He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added.

The action didn't seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>"He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added.<<<

Rhythmic bobbing, called "davining" is an integral part of Orthodox Jewish prayer. Covering the head with a shawl and using phylacteries are also normal. I grew up in Boro Park, Brooklyn, seeing this all the time. Don't they have Jews in Canada? Or is it that they do, but wish that they didn't?

[Fr. Dcn. Raphael]

We prayed out loud in resturaunts, and remember by Midwestern Pentecostal Grandpa's loud, evangelistic prayers for the sould of those around us. I would squirm and try to slide under the table.

When I was older, I would drop a napkin or fork on the floor and say a prayer as my head was bowed in obvious retrieval of my napkin.

Now that I am a patriarch of a family of four kids, I insist on a short prayer, but am sensitive to my kids wish to be inconspicuous....but I insist on the sign of the cross....

[Clark Coleman]

Another example--when we were kids playing sandlot ball we all either made the sign of the cross before going to bat or made a sign of the cross in the dirt with the end of our bats.
Nowadays you only see Hispanics doing that. Were the rest of us Catholics intimidated into stopping the practice by secular society??

Maybe you suddenly realized that God was not necessarily rooting for you to get a hit? Perhaps God loves the pitcher and the fielders as much as the batters?

[James A. Altena]

Perhaps the sign of the cross in the dirt (or upon going to bat) was a prayer that one not get hit by a bean-ball. One could also simply be praying that God allow one to do one's best, and that one play honestly and joyufully. It does not have to be pejoratively intended or interpreted that God is on one side and not the other.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Another example--when we were kids playing sandlot ball we all either made the sign of the cross before going to bat or made a sign of the cross in the dirt with the end of our bats.
Nowadays you only see Hispanics doing that. Were the rest of us Catholics intimidated into stopping the practice by secular society??<<<

If you watch international sports, you would have noticed radical increase in outward signs of piety on the part of Eastern European athletes after 1989. It is not uncommon now to see figure skaters, tennis players, basketball players, hockey players, gymnasts and the like make the sign of the Cross ("backwards", in most cases) before beginning their routines. Three-bar crosses are very much in view. A number of them talk about how their faith affects their behavior and performance as athletes. It's really rather remarkable, given that before 1989, atheism was mandatory, and religous believers were effectively banned from international competition (unless, of course, they were really, really, REALLY good) and public displays of devotion were major career killers.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Perhaps the sign of the cross in the dirt (or upon going to bat) was a prayer that one not get hit by a bean-ball. One could also simply be praying that God allow one to do one's best, and that one play honestly and joyufully. It does not have to be pejoratively intended or interpreted that God is on one side and not the other.<<<

Rougly akin to the test pilot's prayer: "Please, God, don't let me ---- up!"

[Chotki]

Well after 9/11 a lot has changed in the airline industry. It is my personal experience that can say that people are freaked out by any form of religion on a plane.

Especially one reciting from a bible and making prostrations on a plane. But if someone is praying with a prayer rope or a chotki and is not doing it aloud. I do not see what the fuss is about.

Regards,
Tiffany Antonius